JFK’s Assassination Only Grows More
Distant at Dallas’s Sixth Floor Museum

Although it has been 56 years, and even all but one of the immediate Kennedy family has gone into history, there is still an interest in the century changing event. Was it the horrid death of America's youngest president? Was it as Mrs. Johnson uttered in shocked disbelief ('I wish it hadn't happened in Dallas')? Was it that thousands of college and high school yearbooks were dedicated to JFK that year and the next?

Tipping point, turning point, critical mass at which America turned tide; as significant culturally— if not historically—as Thermopylae, or Versailles. FTA: “The ambient paranoia it created is woven into the fabric of American life...” “...What Norman Mailer once characterized as the ‘elusive detachment… of a man who was not quite real to himself,’ an aloofness that allowed Kennedy to “capture the secret imagination of a people,” is the starting point, and characters like President Obama the end-point, of political leaders carved from media ephemera. Now President Trump has inverted the telescope by exuding no chimerical characteristics at all: he is exactly what the camera— and now media-wise America— sees, pores and orange hair and little hands unaffected by creative lensing. Whether Americans like our leaders straight, no chaser, or a bit more elixir-like, in a golden chalice, in the heroic mold, atop a prancing horse rather than a golden escalator, is the question.

I mentioned to my wife that we never heard a mention of it on Friday the 22nd. First time I can recall no mention on the news since 1963. I was in the 7th grade, in science class, when it was announced. They just sent us all home in shock. If JFK were alive today, he would have been a conservative compared to the clown car that is going from state to state.

Last year, my wife and I flew to DFW and took the tour of the book repository floor on November 22nd where Oswald set up and fired his shots at Kennedy. My takeaway from the tour experience - it was an inside job. Someone ordered the hit (Fidel Castro??) and our own CIA carried out the hit order.

How much interest is there in the Garfield or McKinley assassination? Once it recedes from first hand recollection, the Kennedy assassination will fade. If you were five years old in 1963, today you're collecting Social Security. While we "never forget", eventually the general population does. Remember the Maine?

The next day, my family was in a car accident. I was 5 years old. My mother was killed.

Friday afternoon, I was at work recording an accounting transaction when I realized the significance of the day's date. I also realized that I had yet to hear any mention of it in the media. It would be an hour or so before I finally saw mention of it on social media. I would see a grand total of two mentions of it on the internet and not a one on TV. Clearly the JFK assassination is beginning to fade away in the minds of the collective consciousness.

There are two places I have actively avoided in cities where I lived. I failed with both. The first was the Dakota in New York City, where John Lennon was murdered. To me, that was a place of great sadness, and I didn't want to see it in person. Yet one day I was wandering aimlessly through the upper West Side and saw memorial flowers in front of the old apartment building. I turned and walked away as quickly as I could. There were tourists. It made me sad. The other is the Kennedy assassination site in Dallas, where I am now. I remember the night John Lennon was killed. I lived the Kennedy assassination in retrospect--an early book report in primary school, reading William Manchester's excellent Death of a President as a young man--so I understood the details and historical importance, but it was not a place I ever wanted to be. Earlier this year, while recovering from neurological surgery and unable to drive, I walked everywhere and started discovering this remarkable city. One day I found myself in a strangely familiar place I had never been before. I had wandered into Dealey Plaza and was standing several feet from the X where the presidential motorcade was attacked. It made me sad.

I was born in Dallas and still live nearby. I pass by that building all the time, and as a member of the Dallas Press Club, attended a private tour of it before it opened to the public. If you come to Dallas, you really should visit the music, but you can skip the JFK Memorial, which is just a big, ugly cement square that looks like a giant Lego. I don't know what was going through the minds of the people who okayed that. I'm old enough to remember that day, barely. My parents were watching, and when it happened, the local TV coverage suddenly cut off. I remember my dad cursing the idiots at the TV station because he assumed it was another technical snafu on their live coverage, which always happened back then. My mother worked for Scott Foresman Publishing at the Texas School Book Depository and had only recently left that job, so she knew many of the people in the crowd whose cameras were confiscated by the FBI. She'd also known Lee Harvey Oswald, but not well. She described him as an odd little man who didn't talk much to anyone, but she'd see him in the hallways occasionally.

"music" = "museum." Damned autocorrect!

I think the site will continue to draw visitors well into the future. There is still a lot of uncertainty about why JFK was assassinated. And there have been no other assassinations since then (although Reagan and Ford had close calls).

Having recently separated from the military following an Asian assignment, I was teaching in a West Texas high school on that day. There were no Black or "Brown" students in that particular class. A boy came into the room with the news. Student reaction ranged from approval to grief. One girl was so overcome that she had to be escorted to the restroom. I was involved with tying to keep a lid on things in the room and don't recall my immediate feelings. I do remember that for some time afterward, I felt ashamed that the President had been killed in Texas,,..,though Dallas was hundreds of miles away.

OK, cue up the conspiracy buffs. I have been a serious shooter since my teen years, have engineering and physics training, and have owned 6.5 Carcano rifles and carbines since the middle 60s, and fired them in testing many times. The shot was very short for a rifle shot, 60 yds, and rested on a window sill with the car going essentially straight away at slow speed, slightly downhill no real challenge. And yet Oswald missed the first shot (jitters?) and hit the second and third. And yes, the (ignorantly named) magic bullet really can penetrate like that, and testing by many people over the years has verified it repeatedly. Long, round nosed, full metal jacketed, moderate velocity bullets tend to go straight and deep unless they hit something which can shatter the copper alloy jacket, like a skull, and then they come all apart. I have no strong opinion on what or who may have induced Oswald, but his rage at SecNav Connally was captured in a letter begging to have his USMC dishonorable discharge changed to a general discharge. A dishonorable discharge in those days just about guaranteed that you would not be hired by 95% of employers, and Oswald was having serious trouble feeding his wife and small child, which angered and embarrassed him deeply. Many think he was striking against then-governor Connally and got the wrong guy, others think he was striking out at "authority" as an America hating Communist. Other theories abound. I don't know about motivation, but I am very certain that he did the shooting, it was an easy shot, and the rifle and ammo were easily capable of doing what was done. Arguments over motive are legitimate, no question. The simple mechanics are really not in serious question, even though the ignorant have made all sorts of claims and have muddied the waters. I have owned a personal hardbound copy of the Warren Commission Report since it came out, and read it through many times.

I agree with # 13's take, and it should be noted that Oswald's rifle had a scope, making an easy shot even easier. I don't think LHO's motivation is hard to figure if you examine the circumstances of his life. He was a misanthropic loner who lacked empathy for others, felt like a failure in his life and marriage and finally found his Big Chance to show the world that he mattered when JFK's motorcade came right by his workplace.

Ok, I’ll take my cue, #13. I was in 4th grade when Kennedy was shot. My mother never believed that Oswald was the “lone shooter.” I have read and watched anything I could get my hands about the subject, since the day it happened. What is curious to me is that those closest to the actual event—as in location and date—have the most vivid memories and have given the most compelling testimony. Moreover, that eyewitness testimony is ample. So much so that Congress reopened the case in the 1970s (1975?), and judged the assassination to be a probable conspiracy. As the years go by, the “experts” now revel in telling us “the real story.” I can tell you this with absolute certainty: if you are relying on the Warren Commission Report for your truth of the matter, you are missing half the story. Arlen Specter was instrumental in all of this, and not in a good way.

There's no "shame and dismay" in Texas. That Oswald dirtbag was a bolo badge shooter from the Marine Corps, but first and foremost a COMMUNIST! He ain't no Texan!

Oswald did it and he acted alone. No one putting together a conspiracy to assassinate the president of the United States would have assigned the actual killing to an unstable, unreliable, unhappy, angry misfit such as Lee Harvey Oswald. And Jack Ruby acted alone, too. He was nuts and he thought he would be protecting Jackie Kennedy from the circus of an Oswald prosecution and trial.

#15, I will respectfully ask you the same question I ask all the folks who opine about the "unreliablity" of the Warren Commission Report......have you ever even SEEN a copy, let alone read it and studied what they said? I know very much, as a mechanical engineer and a long time rifle and handgun competitor EXACTLY what a rifle can and cannot do, and what a decent shooter can and cannot do. The shot was EASY, especially for a USMC trained marksman like Oswald. And I have verified that the testing of the Oswald rifle for accuracy and the ammunition for penetration matches what MY Carcano rifles can do. Condemning the Warren Commission Report is easy and millions do it. And maybe 0.00001% if them have ever even read a single page of it. I make no great claims for their information about possible motivations, but many other sources back up most of the information on Oswald. The mechanics of the rifle, ammo and the shot are, IMO absolutely accurate - that is pretty much science and ballistics. The rest......perhaps we don't know key info, I won't say that. But #17 makes excellent points, which have been made by other intelligent observers for decades. Oswald makes way more sense as a nutcase, Communist, angry, hateful lone gunman, and makes no sense as a hit man for the mob, or CIA, or whoever your particular conspiracy may call on. But people don't like to believe that one dingbat hater can pull this off - too many "Movie of the Week" murder mysteries with complex plot twists on late night TV.

Agree with 17 and others. One of the reasons the conspiracy theories live on is because the left (Stone included) cannot accept the fact that one of their own murdered JFK and 'Camelot'. Oswald was a communist, a member of the ACLU and the Fair Play For Cuba Committee. He had also moved to the USSR and married a Russian woman. He came back after discovering the Soviet Union was not exactly the socialist utopia he thought it to be. Jackie was right all along when she said that Oswald was "just a silly little communist". The leftists would like to revise the history of this event but it's a perfect example of Occam's Razor.

In answer to your “respectful” question, #18, yes indeed. Not only have I read the Warren Commission Report (more than once, I might add), I have an actual copy of it. I also possess dozens of other research books on the matter, from all different points of view. One could argue that being skeptical of the official government report on this matter, is not lazy, ignorant, nor naive. One could argue that the easiest position to take is to believe what the government tells you. I would’ve thought the events unfolding in government today would be cause for second thoughts, on any official government report. Oh, and btw, I have no ever watched a Movie of the Week in my life.

#20, "not lazy, ignorant, nor naive"-- I did not use those words. Your words, not mine, and you seem to take great personal offense when I make points of fact in a discussion. I am sorry if you took offense, but please do not put words, especially like that, in my mouth.

An, if you do have a copy of the Warren Commission Report, #20, you are the ONLY person that I have ever run across in the last 54 years that has a copy besides myself, but I have had dozens gleefully explain all about how incompetent and counterfactual it is.